Never Ending
by Mac1
Summary: It's three days before Christmas and all is not well.
1. Three days before Christmas

Title: Never Ending  
Author: Mac  
Rating: PG  
Summary: It's two days before Christmas Eve and all is not well.   
  
Archive: Just ask before doing so, I want to know where it ends up. The Graveyard Shift archive is the only one that needs not ask.  
  
Disclaimer: Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, et al own the characters of CSI. The song excerpt is from "Happy Xmas" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I will only claim this story. No profit is being made off this.  
  
Author's Note: Part of the 12 Days of Christmas project on the Graveyard Shift. I'd like to thank Angie and Rita for their help with this.  
  
The Christmas lights blinked on and off, shrouding the room in splashes of primary and secondary colors. First red, then green and yellow, and finally blue. The far side of the room hosted a tiny hand-painted village. Electric candles glowed in the window. The only thing missing from this ideal scene was snow falling outside.  
  
The activity in the room was anything but festive. Two police officers passed through the doors, walkie-talkies blaring out orders from tiny speakers. The living room was the staging area. Through the windows red, blue, and white lights from the arrival of more squad cars out front filtered in, interfering with the blinking lights of the imported Christmas tree.  
  
A hint of citrus was noticeable as movement caused a small breeze to be created. The odor traced from the evergreen that had been picked with hopes that the two house cats wouldn't scratch the fresh wood. The crime scene was in the back bedroom.  
  
The tap on his shoulder brought him back to the task at hand. It was two days before Christmas, his shopping wasn't anywhere near completion, and he now had a murder to solve.  
  
The two-member team stood at the door and surveyed the room. Like the rest of the house, it too was festively decorated in deep shades of red, forest greens, with gold and silver metallic highlights. But instead of the feeling of comfort that was evident through out the house, this room exuded feelings of foreboding, almost oppression.  
  
Amidst Winnie the Pooh wrapping paper, brightly colored ribbons, and sections of comics saved over the year for the festive holiday season, the reason for their presence was neatly wrapped on the floor. The body lay sideways in a pool of darkening crimson fluid, hands tied in front with ribbon and secured with black electrical tape. The cooler night air ruffled the red and green drapes that hid the open window. Wordlessly the couple began to process the room, starting from the door way and working inward and back.  
  
They turned their attention to the body that lay in the middle of the floor after clearing the doorway. The pool of blood stood out against the sand colored carpet. The radio that the victim had been listening to continued playing festive sounds of the holiday, serving as background music to the grisly scene. The coroner silently entered and examined the body, declaring Joni Louc dead.  
  
The declaration was astonishingly somber coming from the coroner who had on previous occasions been cheerful at the approaching season. The body was photographed and removed allowing the two CSIs to continue working. Normally they would have bandied about ideas for what happened, or talked about something else. But this time they worked only in silence, both afraid that the harsh reality of the victim's family celebration turned to a nightmare would break them down.  
  
The radio had faded into almost nothingness as far as they were concerned, becoming part of the menagerie of sounds that surrounded them.  
  
// So this is Christmas  
// And what have you done  
// Another year over  
// And a new one just begun*  
  
The words lingered in the air, haunting them. A sharp click quickly followed and the radio fell as silent as the dead. She looked up at the abrupt loss of noise and observed her co-worker silently for a moment or two. He resumed his task without explanation and hoped that she would too.  
  
The room was processed quickly, neither saying a word. She loaded their equipment as he spoke with Brass. She shut the hatch and waited for him to approach the car. He was quieter than normal and seemed more melancholy. She noted the bags around his eyes earlier that evening and worried that he wasn't sleeping well or at all. She looked at him carefully and noticed what worried her most. It was almost as if he was fading away. Maybe not physically fading, but emotionally. He was withdrawing more and more into himself lately, not showing the same passion he had for cases before. Something happened to him earlier in the year, but she didn't know what it was.  
  
They arrived back at the lab in the same silence that they had left three hours earlier. For the first time in three hours, he spoke to her.  
  
"Cath, could you drop off everything?" He left, not waiting for an answer. She watched his retreating form, bewildered. The words assaulted her ears like a slap on the face. They weren't harsh, but they were devoid of any emotion. He sounded like he was just giving up.  
  
She dropped the evidence off and worked on wrapping up another case. Glancing at the calendar on the wall she noted that she still needed to buy him something for Christmas. They've been exchanging gifts for years, not that Eddie knew. His gifts to her were usually found in her locker, meticulously wrapped in brown paper and twine, and were always practical. She usually gave him small novelties that she hoped would interest him. She had managed to find a series of figurines that featured different bugs. She would place the gifts on his desk when he was out of the office knowing that he wouldn't find it until after she had left for home.  
  
He didn't place the gifts out in public, preferring to place them on a shelf in his office at home, which meant that the shelf was hidden from areas that were privy to other eyes. This year she was at a loss for what she could get him. She couldn't find any bug figurines that fit him.  
  
She picked up the files she was working on and headed for his office. On her way, Greg hijacked her to give her the results of the fiber analysis.  
  
"The cloth fibers you found are from a pair of blue jeans," Greg explained. "None of the major companies have a database to compare the chromatogram against, but I'd say it was from a pair of Wranglers or Levis."  
  
"Thanks, Greg." Catherine took the results that he handed her and left the lab. The fingerprint lab would be her next stop, but first she wanted to check in with Grissom.  
  
His office door was shut and locked. She didn't see any lights filtering through the blinds to suggest that he was still there. No noise could be heard either. The last time he didn't speak for hours on end he was quietly suffering from a migraine in his office. But usually she could hear soft piano music or the sound of waves gently coming in. As much as she wanted to hunt him down, she knew that she had to stay and fill in for him. Sometimes he could be so infuriating. 


	2. Thoughts and Exchanges

The shadows engulfed him. This was where he felt most at ease- alone. He knew running off like he did wasn't him, but seeing that body in the middle of what would have otherwise been a festive atmosphere got to him. Normally he could control himself and focus entirely upon the task at hand. But when the song came on the radio, he started to unravel.  
  
The early morning began to creep into the room he chose as his refuge. Light reflected off the metal fringe of his glass figurines. Refracted light splashed across the white walls surrounding him in muted colors of the rainbow. This was his favorite room when he needed a recharge and didn't want to be found.  
  
The room itself wasn't anything special, but it held many fond memories and objects that he had gathered over the last forty years. Books, photographs, stones from walks on the beach, and gifts. Most of the gifts were from Catherine, but some were from other co-workers. A skeleton hung on its stand in the corner from the coroner's office in L.A. A foot tall statue of Sherlock Holmes hand-painted by Sara resided on file cabinet filled with research notes. Each gift was precious, each told a story about the person to whom they belonged. But his favorites were the whimsical glass and crystal figurines that Catherine had given him over the years.  
  
He didn't know where she found them, but each one reflected a different part of him and their friendship. It had almost become a game for him. He would try to find something that wouldn't cross the line he kept between them, but still showed that he appreciated her friendship. This year he had found a paperweight that he felt was a good statement of what he was going through.  
  
He picked up the crystal paperweight and stared through it. The swirl of translucent colors captured the morning light entrancing him. The confusion caused by the colorful helical structure inside the partial sphere mirrored the relationship he saw between them. Each ribbon of color wasn't exactly the same, but they seemed to be connected and never ending. The clock struck seven jolting him out of his thoughts. She would be leaving soon in search of him  
  
He sat down at his desk and placed the crystalline object into a small box covered with fragments of colorful papers that he had glued to the surface. He taped the box shut and placed into a larger box and wrapped it in a metallic color paper. He then set the box into an even larger box, carefully filling the remaining space with shreds of old newspapers and packing peanuts that he hadn't dissolved in acetone. This final box he wrapped in his customary brown paper and twine.  
  
With the present finally wrapped he withdrew an old wood-shafted pen from the portable writing desk behind him and fitted a medium sized nib into place. After drawing a barely visible line on the brown paper with a pencil, he dipped the calligraphy pen into the bottle of black ink and carefully inscribed her name on the package. The freshly inked name stood out from the drab paper. He blotted the letters he drew in her favorite Old English style careful not to smudge the ink and let it dry completely before moving out to the living room.  
  
He was in the middle of making breakfast when her sharp knock was heard at the door. He smiled as he lowered the flame on the stove and went to answer the door. On the other side of the door Catherine tapped her foot impatiently on the ground. After she found out that he had uncharacteristically left upon their return to the lab, she went to check up on the fingerprints they had found at the scene.  
  
The electrical tape had yielded a perfect fingerprint and the technician had found a match in IAFIS. Before she left for the day, Brass notified her that the guy belonging to the fingerprint had been arrested for driving with a suspended license in a stolen vehicle a couple of hours earlier. As she watched the interview between the suspect and Brass, she was glad that neither she nor Grissom were in the room. As it was, she had barely been able to restrain herself from going into the interrogation room to beat him senseless.  
  
The door opened and she entered without waiting for him to speak. She offered no greeting, just threw her light jacket, a rectangular package, and her purse on his leather couch before turning to him. Eyes blazing with anger, she faced him and placed her hands on her hips. Her stance told him that he was in trouble. Gathering the courage to weather a storm he retreated to the kitchen in time to rescue the eggs from scorching.  
  
"Why did you do it?" She had followed him into the kitchen looking for an answer to his actions. She saw him flinch slightly at the edge in her voice. She had thought that she had calmed down, but seeing him act as if nothing was wrong just pushed her to the point of no return. "What happened? Why did you run?"  
  
Grissom brought down two plates and added the cooked eggs to them. Before turning around, he took out some orange juice and bagels from the refrigerator. Placing an egg bagel on her plate, he turned around to offer her breakfast. The shock he saw on her face was priceless. Setting down the plate he put another bagel into the toaster poured himself a glass of orange juice.  
  
"I don't know, Cath. I just couldn't take it anymore." He turned to face her, drink in hand. "When that song came on, I just..." His voice trailed off. He couldn't describe what he felt. It was like everything he did was for not. Senseless crimes still took place during times when there was supposed to be good will toward men. He was losing a part of himself to a genetic disorder that they still didn't completely understand. "I felt hopeless. I know I've said that in our jobs we meet people on their worst day. It's part of the nature of what I do, but once, just once, I would like to come to a scene only to told that I'm not needed; that everything is fine."  
  
Catherine looked at her friend and saw his walls crumbling. In all the long years that she had known him, he had always been the strong one. She knew he was torn apart on some of the cases they worked on, but never had she seen him fall apart like this. He was her anchor in life, the one thing that she could count on to be there whenever she needed someone to vent out to or confide in.  
  
"There is hope, Gil."  
  
"Where, Catherine? Show me how what we do makes a difference!" He slammed the glass on the counter splashing the orange liquid out. The glass cracked upon impact and slowly the juice oozed out into his hand.  
  
She came around the corner and turned him to face her. "Hope is all around us. Every time we solve a case, closure is found, someone can grieve freely. What we do makes a difference."  
  
"How do you know that?"  
  
"I don't. For Lindsey's sake I have to believe that with every closed case, there's one less bastard that I have to worry about." Grissom watched her as she spoke. Her words made sense. He wished he could have that faith back. Faith that he made a difference in the world. But how can it be? Crimes still happen everyday. The rates change, but the crimes are sill there. "And you make a difference, Gris. I know it may not seem like it, but you do. If you hadn't recruited me all those years ago, who knows where I may have ended up."  
  
"But I didn't do anything, Cath."  
  
"You listened to me, even when I didn't want to talk. You are and will always be my best friend. I would be incredibly foolish if I let you self destruct without being there to try and stop it from happening."  
  
"How do you do it?"  
  
"Do what?"  
  
"Handle everything by yourself. How do you cope with everything that life has handed you?"  
  
Catherine looked at the man before her. The pleading in his voice tore at her. He had always been so strong, but now there was a chink in his armor. She didn't know where it was, but it was there letting in the self doubt that he never seemed to suffer from. "I don't. I can't handle everything by myself. I know I've said never regret, never look back, but that doesn't mean I handle everything by myself. It's not possible. That's why I have friends, that's why I won't let you slip from our friendship."  
  
"I don't want to lose it either. I'm just so unsure."  
  
"Gill, when you're ready, I'll be here."  
  
"I- Thank you, Cath." He knew she was telling him that she knew something was wrong and was concerned, but she was willing to wait until he was ready. When she first arrived, he had almost convinced himself that life would be better if he just faded away. But Catherine had given him a choice. Continue to fade and leave the one job he truly loved or to pick up the pieces of his life and trust that all will turn out they way it was meant to be.  
  
Catherine could see the battle raging in his mind and waited. In all the years that she had known him, the one thing she could count on was that she only had to point him in one direction and wait for him to make a decision. She knew he was frustrated with the overall lack of progress they all hoped to make at some level. She picked up her bagel and ripped a chunk out as she entered the living room.  
  
The living room was decorated with little holiday cheer. On the coffee table she noticed for the first time a large brown package. She had just turned on the radio and tuned it to the only station in town that could guarantee Christmas music around the clock when he entered the living room.  
  
"I'm sorry about earlier."  
  
"Don't worry about it. I covered for you. Al was a little disappointed that you weren't there for the body, but we managed without you." She paused to face him. He stood on the other side of the coffee table wiping his hands on a towel. He looked like the battle was over in his mind and the side that she hoped would win was victorious. She smiled and picked up the package that she had dumped on the couch earlier. "So, how were you going to get that into my locker?"  
  
Grissom looked at the package she indicated and smiled. "Actually I was going to drop off at your place this year."  
  
"My place? Now you've made me curious." Catherine set the present in her hand on the table and picked up the large gift and shook it gently. Hearing nothing to give her a solid lead as to what it was she asked, "May I?"  
  
"No." Grissom almost laughed at the look on her face as a result of his answer. "I want you to wait until Christmas day this time. May I?"  
  
Catherine handed him the smaller package that he indicated with a nod of his head. "Sure. I don't know how well you'll like it, but it was the only thing I could think of this year."  
  
They sat down across from each other and as she ate, he slowly unwrapped the paper in an effort not to tear the old world map that covered his gift. Removing the paper he handled the brown box inspecting it for some clue as to what it contained. Catherine suppressed a chuckle as she watched him go through his ritual. He finally gave up and opened the box. Inside he found a glass board with alternating squares of frosted and clear glass. Underneath a piece of black felt the pieces of a chess set were stored in a felt lined wooden box.  
  
"I don't know what to say. Thank you, Catherine." He gently caressed the clear and frosted glass pieces. He could only think of one place where he would display it and if he told her, it would shock her.  
  
"All evidence to the contrary. I wasn't sure if you still played, but I thought it might be fun to have a game every now and then."  
  
"Care to play now?" The silence that followed his question was filled by the radio.  
  
//Do you remember me  
//I sat upon your knee  
//I wrote to you with childhood fantasies  
  
//Well, I'm all grown up now  
//And still need help somehow  
//I'm not a child, but my heart still can dream  
  
//So here's my lifelong wish  
//My grown-up Christmas list  
//Not for myself, but for a world in need  
  
//No more lives torn apart  
//That wars would never start  
//And time would heal all hearts  
//Everyone would have a friend  
//And right would always win  
//And love would never end  
//This is my grown-up Christmas list*  
  
Catherine nodded her head and helped him to set the board up as the song continued to voice both of their wishes. As they played, Grissom found himself at ease with his surroundings once again, but this time he wasn't alone. He had friends and as Catherine told him a few years ago, he also had a family that he realized wouldn't let him go quietly into the night. He had known this all along in his heart, but his mind hadn't allowed it to be brought into the equation until now.  
  
*"Grown-Up Christmas List" was written by David Foster and Linda Thompson Jenner, and sung by Amy Grant. From the album "Home For Christmas" [c. 1992, Myrth] 


End file.
